Clunies-Ross Family

The Clunies-Ross family were the original settlers of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean. From 1827 to 1978, the family ruled the previously uninhabited islands as a private fiefdom, initially as terra nullius and then later under British (1857–1955) and Australian (1955–1978) sovereignty. The head of the family was usually recognised as the resident magistrate, and was sometimes styled as the "King of the Cocos Islands" – a title initially given by the press but later self-proclaimed.

John Clunies-Ross was a merchant originating from the Shetland Islands. In 1813 he was at Timor as Third Mate on board the whaler Baroness Longueville when he received the opportunity to become captain of the brig Olivia, which opportunity he took.

Reportedly he first cruised the waters of the then uninhabited Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1825. After surveying them he moved his family to live on one of the islands in 1827. Only Joshua Slocum used different dates, when he wrote that "John Clunis-Ross, who in 1814 touched [the island] in the ship Borneo on a voyage to India", nailed up a Union Jack with plans to settle in the future and "[..] returned 2 years later with his wife and family". He planted "hundreds of coconut palms and brought in Malay workers to harvest the nuts", building a business by selling copra. In the beginning, Javanese convicts were used as laborers and "crime of all kinds was rife", before "getting rid of the criminal class and obtaining a better type of Malay coolie." According to a 1903 article in The Timaru Herald Ross "...[ran] his little colony on model lines and succeeded beyond expectation" and Charles Darwin mentioned after his 1836 visit with the H.M.S Beagle that he "found the natives in a state of freedom". However the article left out the sentence that immediately followed :"but in most other points they are considered as slaves". Ross traded with Dutch vessels going to Dutch ports on Java and Sumatra and became a naturalised Dutch subject; He had approached both the British and the Dutch government for annexation but neither had responded.

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